There’s a really good, resource-rich post over at our niche marketing forum filled with great advice about how to pick your 1st affiliate niche or how to determine if a niche will be profitable. So I thought I’d pull out some of those resources and post here for our blog readers. Enjoy!

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Kirsty recently blogged some good advice about how to pick your 1st niche.
Ask Kirsty - How Do I Find My First Affiliate Niche?
Good points - thanks Kirsty!
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Here’s a good new thread that’s developing about the reasons to find a small targeted niche when you are new, instead of going after the biggies or going with a broad market category.

Linda - a Q? How to Know if Niche is Too Competitive
Some really good stuff! (then again I wrote most of it and I’m biased!) ;-)

notaprettysite wrote: “Linda, that post was like a little mini-course all in itself! It was awesome! And it finally sheds some light on the whole overcrowded niche/high-paying keyword thing I’ve been wondering about for ages.”
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This advice is about finding a good niche for your 1st blog but the same thing applies if it’s your 1st affiliate site. Then again your 1st affiliate site might be a BLOG - so see - it all fits together no matter how you cut it!

7 Steps To Choose A Niche For Your Blog
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Here’s another look at how to pick your 1st niche, with some slightly different but valuable ideas. It offers a 6 Steps process for choosing a niche.

Choose a Niche That Earns You Cash
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vingold over at SeoMoz has a good yet simple 3 step formula.

Finding Your Niche

“This week I’ve been doing an audit of each of my sites, looking at current rankings, traffic, etc, and looking at how competitive each niche area was. The whole process got me thinking about how we select the niches that we’re in – and whether we’re in the right niche for us.

I put together this very simple and short guide to finding YOUR niche:

All of us can put the things that we do into three basic circles: things we like to do, things we are good at, and things that can make us money by doing them.”
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Niche - Start with Many or Focus on ONE?
“ALSO by the time that 1st niche is ROLLING - YOU WILL HAVE LEARNED SOME VALUABLE LESSONS that help you better tackle the next niche. Your 1st niche is already starting to make sales, your 2nd niche is faster and easier and then you keep building from there.

ONE THING I CAN’T STRESS ENOUGH - It’s very important for newbies to get that 1st sale as soon as possible. If they work and work and try to build an “everything but the kitchen sink - mall type site” and don’t see any money for 3 months, 98% will drop out saying affiliate marketing doesn’t work!”
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Have a great weekend - good luck scratching that niche!